O'Borg

That could have its disadvantages.

By reducing the time for the standard brain/mouth or brain/keyboard I'm-being-an-idiot neurological checks down to nothing, it would be far too easy to instantaneously make a total d!ck out of yourself to the whole internet

Faster isn't always better

If I could have implants, I'd go for the neural co-processor and skillchip/refchip suite. Just being able to plug in an eprom and speak fluently in a foreign language or suddenly have an entire referance library in your head would be cool.

Turning yourself into Bruce Lee with the flick of a mental switch would be handy too

Wow.

I am honestly and completely totally and utterly gobsmacked at the reaction to this topic.

The last thing I expected on a Cyberpunk discussion board was a sizable number of posters who forcefully disagreed with questionably dishonest practices

I have been known to fly the jolly roger in the past, usually with application software I really seriously needed but was too poor to afford. These days I get paid to sit on my harris and play with computers

But I still pirate sometimes. Why? I call it 'try before you buy'.

There is so much software that is complete and total carp yet marketed as being the best thing since sliced bread and costs more than a small aircraft carrier, or games that are alledgedly fantastic, if you happen to be a hardcore games freak with more than the usual number of fingers. Its frequently not possible or at least a damn chore to take the stuff back to the shop and get a refund anyway.

Same goes with music. I get annoyed at paying £15 for a CD with two good songs and 13 fillers, but thanks to the 'net you can preview the CD and decide if its worth it.

I bought the Darkness debut CD after hearing half a song on the radio and downloading six MP3s. Otherwise, they wouldnt have got a sale.

Personally, I think a lot of people who pirate the stuff and have gigs of low quality MP3s on their computers are the people who would never have actually bought the originals anyway. So in effect, they arent really costing anyone anything.

MP3s, seriously. They suck. I've got a PC with a pretty basic onboard audio system and some cheap and cheerful speakers, and I can hear the difference between a 128, 160 and even 192kb MP3s and the original CD audio. If I plug in a decent set of sennheiser cans I can tell from a 256kb and CD. And if I put it through my hifi, you'd have to be stone deaf not to hear the differance in quality.

Sounds interesting Rocky, a couple of questions though :

Can I play a simple solo with a big gun for once? I need to ease back into the genre before tackling techies again.

Is this New York as in Home Of the Brave sourcebook or something custom? (I havent read HotB in over a year but its propping up a table somewhere in the house if I need it)

Arent you already running a couple of games here? No offence intended, but the last thing I want to get into is a game with a great GM but whos so busy they can only post on a monthly basis

I'll have to take a bow on Cthulupunk. My character creation skills just werent up to scratch for what was required, and now I'm nearly a year rustier.

But like I said, if you want to use Jonny as an NPC to fill out the team he's all yours.

Undecided as yet.

With one thing and another I got so bored for some gameage the idea of spending two days creating a character with an in-game lifespan of two minutes actually started to sound appealing.  

I was going to kick off my own CP style Pbem using a stupidly simple homebrew rpg system, but of the five people who answered my initial call, only two of them sent me character sheets and one of them managed to completely misunderstand the idiotproof rules twice in a row.

..for a game that is.

Anyone got a vacancy for a rather rusty player? I'd prefer sneaking to slaughter and a game frequency that doesnt make me forget who I'm playing.

If you want to continue from where you left off, I've got no objections to you running Jonny as an NPC. I might even have his character sheet kicking around somewhere if you want it.

OOC

Okay, you guys carry on without me while I go find the sourcebook for the Cyberpunk 2020/Cthulu version of Chicago and discover what my character ought to know. Cya in a few months.

Jonny blinks "Account? Tyso001."

"Delivery, to the Ebenezzer Funeral home. That's on Pratt and Sheridan, I think."

"Yeah, I expect they dont serve your brand of communion wafers and holy water anyway." Jonny grunts quietly to himself. "Nick! You want anything?"

IIRC, if you go to Caliver Books / Warlord Games on the Southend Road they used to have a message board where you could post game information & fliers for clubs.

Havent been there in a few months so I could be wrong.

BTW, go West about 15 miles. Thats me, that is.

Do you still need a driver at all?

And if so, would a car be supplied, or would we have to either pay for one out of our characters own pocket or arrange it ourselves?

OOC - Everyone else fallen asleep??

IC -

"Yeah, Hi. Thats two hot subs, Bacon, onion and spicey sauce on white, and a coffee, white with sugar, uh, hold on a sec..."

Jonny whistles down the stairs "Hey! If ya wanna order in some breakfast holler now, I'm on the phone!"

There are few subjects that are as bound to create mayhem in a forum as the one about Iraq.

Apart from the US, nobody else in the world really wants to be a focal point for Osama Bin Looney and his suicide bomb buddies, which is what anyone who obviously sides with the US on invading Iraq will become.

By working towards a 'UN' sponsored invasion of Iraq, everyone gets a degree of anonymity and can claim to follow a UN mandate rather than a US one.

I dont expect it will make a lot of difference to OBL, but when dealing with governments who are trying to keep a lid on OBL sympathisers, it may help.

Just think, if this was 'punk, there'd be a few teams of hi-power Eurosolo's inserted into Iraq, and the problem would be solved with a minimum of assassination, torture and high explosives

I'd heard about primitive 5x5 displays years ago. I never realised they'd got this far. It's increadible.

You know, an 11mm diagonal CCD from a Digital Camera can give you a 1280x1024 display.

How much processing power do you reckon it would take to convert that to work as the input device?

I had a character once (who's player had read 'Hardwired' one too many times) who wanted a fake John Thomas with a 12ga shell concealed in the tip, to be triggered when in *ahem* very close proximity to the target.

As GM, I pointed out that it would require the characters own tackle to be severed. His character failed a COOL roll and refused to undergo the operation, much to the relief of everyone except the player.

Jonny picks up the phone. Fortunately he's seen enough old 2d movies to know roughly how the dial works, and manages to get through to a food outlet (OOC - He ought to know a good few that serve early morning customers, him being an all-nite party animal rockstar etc.)

"Yello? Yeah, gimme two hot bacon subs, spicey sauce, onions on white, and a large coffee, white, extra sugar. And deliver to, uh, hold on..." he puts his hand over the mouthpeice and yells down the stairs to the guys in the basement "Hey! What the fluck is the address here anyway?"

Jonny raises an eyebrow, glances witheringly towards the basement and mutters darkly "Join the missus for breakfast eh? Its not the money or the company I love so much about working here, its the perks."

He sighs and looks around for a phone.

Jonny regards Nick and pulls his best cool look.

"Tell you what, you guys stay here and see if he can walk himself to the car yet, and I'll go upstairs and take my meds." he sniffs pointedly "Which I reckon is cooking right now."

He straightens his jacket, cycles the color of his eyes from grey to blue and back again, and jogs up the stairs.

Quote (Monk @ Jan. 06 2003,14:13)

Yet again, I am reminded that we don't all speak English. The Brits speak English, Aussies speak Australian, Americans speak American...

And politicians the world over speak bollocks

At the word 'Breakfast' Jonny starts to move towards the door, and stops when the old guy starts getting freaky.

"Warm? What happened, did you forget to set the slab to cold or something?"

Apart from the usual keys, wallet, comb, mobile phone etc, when at work you'll always find me carrying a bunch of keys for various data and server cabinets, and until recently I always had a Leatherman pocket workshop and mini-Maglite on a belt clip, and whats known in-trade as a pot-twiddler - basically a small scewdriver designed for adjusting very small potentiometers. I find its exactly the right size for undoing the screws on a 9/15/25 way D-connector like those used on monitor or serial cables.

Co-workers used to snigger at me for carrying a torch, until it dawned on them that when tracing cables through a rats nest of a wiring closet, being able to see what you were doing was a good idea. So they borrowed mine all the time.

I had one proper New Years resolution, which was to stop winding people up. I broke that within 20 minutes I should have added a rider 'More than they deserve', which would have got me another 5 minutes into the new year at least.

My other resolutions are :

- Fix the suspension on the green hornet (resolved to do that last September!)

- Hang out more in the Forums proper, rather than just jumping right into Cthulupunk or whatever game I'm playing.

- Finish at least one of the half dozen novella/short stories I have lying around.

- Get a life (had that once since 1992!)

O'Borg

Havent actually seen it myself but apparently its a bit Cyberpunk.

By chance more than design I happened to spot that its showing on UK BBC1 from 0:30 to 02:50 on New Years Day. I expect everyone here will be otherwise occupied though, so one for the VCRs perhaps?

O'Borg